Same firm vetted Snowden, Navy shooting suspect

By Dion Nissenbaum , Devlin Barrett

Aaron Alexis, the ex-Navy reservist accused in the massacre.

Reuters

The company that performed a faulty investigation of former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden said Thursday it also conducted the government’s first, and only, background check of Aaron Alexis, the slain military contractor suspected of killing 12 people Monday at the Washington Navy Yard.

US Investigations Services LLC said it carried out the 2007 background investigation of Mr. Alexis when he joined the military as a Navy reservist, but gave no more details on its work.

The revelation could be another blow for USIS, which is the focus of a grand-jury investigation looking into allegations that the company improperly rushed cases through the process without a proper review.

The federal Office of Personnel Management, which oversaw the USIS work, said earlier this week that the 2007 background check did include information on Mr. Alexis’s 2004 arrest in Seattle after shooting out the tires of a car in what he described as an “anger-fueled” blackout.

It isn’t clear how much detail USIS provided on the arrest or if the federal government sought more information about the incident before granting Mr. Alexis “secret” security clearance once the file was reviewed.

Mert Miller, associate director for Federal Investigative Services at the Office of Personnel Management, said its review of USIS’s work on the 2007 case concluded that “the file was complete and in compliance with all investigative standards.” He said the investigation was handed over to the Defense Department, which made the decision to grant Mr. Alexis’s secret security clearance.

The 2007 investigation by USIS came before Mr. Alexis was involved in more run-ins with the law, including a 2008 arrest for disorderly conduct outside an Atlanta bar and a 2010 arrest after he was accused of firing a gun into his neighbor’s ceiling.

Mr. Alexis was able to retain his secret clearance when he left the Navy in 2011 and used it to get a job with The Experts, the South Florida technology company that hired him to work on a contract at the Navy Yard. The Experts said it hired a firm to carry out two background checks of Mr. Alexis over the past year that turned up nothing more serious than a traffic violation.

USIS carried out a 2011 background investigation of Mr. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who used his post to take scores of classified documents on the country’s top-secret surveillance programs and passed them to journalists across the globe.

Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that USIS carried out a flawed investigation of Mr. Snowden that failed to interview enough people and neglected to check potential questions about his overseas travel. USIS defended its work and said the government had raised no objections about Mr. Snowden’s investigation at the time.

The latest disclosure drew a strong response from Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), who called for “a top-to-bottom overhaul of how we vet those who have access to our country’s secrets and to our secure facilities.”

USIS has been a dominant player in the business of conducting background checks for the federal government since the industry was privatized in 1996. Today the company carries out about 45% of the government’s background investigations, according to federal estimates. In the current fiscal year, USIS had more than $415 million in federal contracts, according to the most recent data.

Earlier Thursday, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the Navy Yard shooting suspect used a sawed-off shotgun to fire on co-workers in Building 197.

James Comey told reporters that Mr. Alexis, after taking a bag into a fourth-floor bathroom, emerged carrying a shotgun that he had bought two days earlier. “The shotgun was cut down at both ends—the stock was sawed off, and the barrel was sawed off a little bit,” said Mr. Comey, who added it was possible the changes were made to the gun in order to fit it in the bag.

Mr. Alexis carried ammunition in a cargo pocket on his pants, the director said.

The gunman started shooting people “with no discernible pattern” almost immediately after coming out of the bathroom. “It appears to me that he was wandering the halls and hunting people to shoot.”

Authorities have found no evidence to suggest he targeted specific people there because of his work. “He appears to be moving without particular direction or purpose,” the director said.

Mr. Comey said much of the evidence was based on video of the shooting. An official familiar with the investigation has said the FBI has gathered an extensive video record of the shooting, largely because there were so many closed-circuit television cameras at the building.

The FBI director said they have found no evidence to indicate Mr. Alexis fired the weapon down into the atrium from the open hallway as had been described by witnesses and officials immediately after the incident. Instead, he said the gunman was moving and shooting in the hallway, Mr. Comey said. Mr. Alexis shot a security guard, took his handgun and also used that weapon, officials said.

At another point, it appears Mr. Alexis fired out from a doorway inside the building, striking a worker standing in an alley, the FBI director said. Eventually, police officers were able to pin the suspect down, and engaged in a shootout in which the suspect was shot dead by police, he said.

The director said it was still too soon in the investigation to reach conclusions about security or job screening for Mr. Alexis, who was a military contractor who had been working in the building. Mr. Alexis had a number of run-ins with police over the past decade and had told police in Rhode Island last month that he was hearing voices.

“There are indications this was a person with mental-health troubles and we’re just trying to better understand that,” Mr. Comey said.